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Podcast: StarDate
Episode: Listening to Mars
Description: These are the sounds of Mars: a dust devil … a rover trundling across the surface … the steady sigh of the wind.
All of these sounds were recorded by the Perseverance rover – the first craft to carry microphones to Mars. Scientists have used the recordings to learn more about how sound carries on Mars.
The planet’s atmosphere is less than one percent as thick as Earth’s atmosphere, so it’s much quieter on Mars. It’s especially quiet around noon, when sound waves are bent upward, away from the ground. The atmosphere is also much colder th...